The other day we looked at Twitter Bootstrap based themes and plugins, Boostrap is a collection of HTML, CSS, Javascript code that web developers can use in their own projects. Since it was released there have been quite a few themes, templates and plugins which use it. The latest is a premium theme called StrapPress which provides a basic responsive framework for you to use to build your sites.

In this review I'm going to take a look at what feature it offers and show you how to set it up.

Install The Theme

Upload the theme you receive after purchase and then visit "Appearance" > "Themes" to activate it :

Once the theme is activated, you will see a new menu item under "Appearance" called "Theme Options" where you can setup your theme :

Theme Options

Under the theme options, the first tab is for disabling certain theme elements such as breadcrumbs, featured homepage and the call to action button. By default the homepage is setup like a business site / landing page, if you disable it, it will appear like a regular blog theme.

You then have a standard logo upload box and the next tab is "Homepage" where y0u can configure the frontpage - you can enter a headline and strapline, text content and choose various button colors and sizes which are provided by the Twitter Bootstrap CSS.

Next up you have a tab to configure gallery settings, again you can choose button color and sizes, how many columns to use and title sizes etc :

The theme produces some nice looking galleries like this :

Next up you have the footer and webmaster tools sections - here you can enter custom footer text and paste your tracking codes for things like Google Analytics :

Finally, there is a social media icons section which you can enable or disable these in the header and footer, there is space for the following sites :

Twitter

Facebook

Reddit

Pinterest

Tumblr

Linkedin

Youtube

Vimeo

Stumbleupon

RSS

Google +

Which look like this when added :

Conclusion

This is a nice clean theme and would make a great starting point for building a business website, the fact it is responsive and conforms to a number of display sizes is great.

The theme options panel is fairly comprehensive - A general user could customize the theme quite easily but for more indepth stuff you would need to know some CSS and HTML. The gallery section is really nice and so are individual pages, my only complaint is the blog page listing the entries - this looks a little untidy to me but could be easily fixed via CSS such as reducing the blog post title sizes and adding some padding between entries.

Overall if you are looking for a responsive theme to start your build with, I think this is a solid choice so check it out.

Very true GPL can be forked, but GPL also says that derivative needs to be different from the original work. Good example of this “gray” area is http://wordpress.org/about/license/

In WPORG when we review Theme, derivative work is accepted only if the Theme is much different from the original work, not only visually but also in codes as well. Adding more stuff and switching from my grids to bootstrap doesn’t really classify as real derivative work.

Please see http://lists.wordpress.org/pipermail/theme-reviewers/2011-October/007016.html Chip is another admin and also Theme Review Team Member.

and it says:

Here’s where the Review process gets incredibly subjective. Code can be
derivative, just as design can be derivative. I see at least three reasons
to consider the derivative nature of a work:

1) To preserve rightful copyright (and license freedoms)
2) To ensure that the Repository does not become flooded with what amount to
different “skins” of the same Theme
3) To ensure code is used purposefully, rather than merely copy-pasta. Code
that is copied just because it was “there” in the original Theme is less
likely to be understood, and therefore more likely to be implemented
incorrectly (or needlessly), and also more likely to become a risk to
security or robustness of the Theme.

So: working from each other’s best practices, and not re-inventing wheels:
definitely a good thing! But we still have to consider the above caveats
(and there may be others).

Many will assume that as long as the Theme is GPL we can do pretty much whatever we please with it and as you can see it doesn’t work that way at all. I spent thousands of hours (just like many) and Theme is 100% free and this specific one is $35 and it’s 80% same as mine.

Last month I spotted this http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-special-offers-forum/555620-all-one-wordpress-theme-wp-infinity-desktop-ipad-smartphones-fb-timeline-pages-ready.html#post5998417 where the “author” just changed the colors to dark blue and started selling, It was shut down quickly.I contacted Brad and he said that this was his first public release and it will be changed.

hubs, you’re misunderstanding how the GPL works. In a nutshell, the GPL requires you to hand over the source code whenever you distribute your code, but it says nothing whatsoever about charging for it.

Since WP themes are distributed as code, that requirement is taken care of. The only violation here would be if Brad attempted to un-GPL StrapPress.

Theoretically, this means that anyone could further distribute StrapPress on their own for free (the code, anyway, perhaps not images/icons), but in general, open-source businesses make money on ease of installation and general support, even though the code itself can be distributed freely.